Field of Glory: Empires Unveiled!

[rbodleyscott]

Since I have FOG2 I am wondering if you can play the battles initiated in FOG Empires in a PBEM game. I only play solo games to learn the mechanics of a game and then move to PBEM. It indicates that up to 6 players can play so if player A initiates a battle with player B and they decided to resolve their battle using FOG2 that would mean that the other four players would have to wait until A & B completed their battle. I know it takes a few weeks for me to finish a battle PBEM so I can't see this being a viable option. Maybe the option of resolving battles using FOG2 is for solo play only?

Currently it is designed for solo play, but who knows what the future may bring. As you say, it might be somewhat impracticable to run a campaign with more than 2 players if the battles were to be played out in FOG2.

[zakblood]

My understanding is that AGEOD tried something very similar for their American Civil War game with the Take Command series. The idea was that you could export a file from AGEOD's ACW into the Take Command game. You would fight the battle using the Take Command battle engine and then export the files back into AGEOD's ACW. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons, that attempt at integrating the two games was not a success. If you played those games a lot, you can find some similar files in the game directory, so it looks like they got pretty far along.

well you learn something new each and every day, something i didn't know either, while i'm always thinking i know everything, every day someone proves me how wrong i am

[Tamas]

My understanding is that AGEOD tried something very similar for their American Civil War game with the Take Command series. The idea was that you could export a file from AGEOD's ACW into the Take Command game. You would fight the battle using the Take Command battle engine and then export the files back into AGEOD's ACW. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons, that attempt at integrating the two games was not a success. If you played those games a lot, you can find some similar files in the game directory, so it looks like they got pretty far along.

well you learn something new each and every day, something i didn't know either, while i'm always thinking i know everything, every day someone proves me how wrong i am

That is, quite simply, not true.

[zakblood]

thanks for the update

[SteveD64]

(Sorry if this has been asked before) Will the FOG2 part of this game be fully automated? ie. Will Empires start FOG2 and "set up" the battle, then make note of the results and apply them or will the player have to do most (or all) of this?

[pharnabazus]

GLORIOUS!!!

What else needs to be said?

[Barrold713]

(Sorry if this has been asked before) Will the FOG2 part of this game be fully automated? ie. Will Empires start FOG2 and "set up" the battle, then make note of the results and apply them or will the player have to do most (or all) of this?

I am keenly interested in how smoothly the transition between systems is accomplished. Obviously the more hassle it is to use, the less it will be used.
BDH

[willard]

My understanding is that AGEOD tried something very similar for their American Civil War game with the Take Command series. The idea was that you could export a file from AGEOD's ACW into the Take Command game. You would fight the battle using the Take Command battle engine and then export the files back into AGEOD's ACW. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons, that attempt at integrating the two games was not a success. If you played those games a lot, you can find some similar files in the game directory, so it looks like they got pretty far along.

well you learn something new each and every day, something i didn't know either, while i'm always thinking i know everything, every day someone proves me how wrong i am

That is, quite simply, not true.

You may want to check on that one.

[kongxinga]

I am just super excited for the new AGEOD engine, that presumably can take advantage of multi cores. Pride of Nations was such a great game, but the time to resolve turns was ridiculous. Same for Wars of Napoleon, with the long turn time, out of memory and so forth. Such beautiful games let down by their internals. The old AGEOD engine was at its best in bilateral conflicts, such as RUS or Espana 36. Once it went to many actors it suffered for it.

Also AJE and its spinoffs were amazing, learnt so much history, disposition of forces, and actual problems facing the commanders of each side. Hannibal Terror of Rome were my favourite despite never coming close to defeating the Romans as Carthage (lost half my army trying the overland route, even with as many depots and sea supply as I could get.)

[Lebo44]

What is the estimated release date? H1 or H2 of 2019?

And will there be any technology tree in the game? Or any innovation/invention system? I don't remember it to be mentioned during the Twitch stream.

[Froz]

Hello,

This news is incredibly fascinating. I can't wait to play both games that way. And I don't think balancing will be such a problem. There are difficulty settings possible, but also various factions can be easier or harder (see Paradox games how well that works), there is no need to provide "balanced" (that is same difficulty level) for all starts, quite the opposite. So if the player is doing well on both strategic and tactical level, they could just try playing some exotic small country and try to conquer Europe. I imagine this mode would be used 99% in single player games anyway.

I have a question about something though - how will it work in terms of me having some, but not other DLCs of FoG2? Will Empires only use core FoG2 army lists? Or will it be able to use units from DLCs, depending on what the player own? Or maybe it will use anything it needs, even if the player doesn't own a specific DLC?

I'm sorry if this was already explained, but I couldn't find that information. Thanks.

[Tamas]

I have a question about something though - how will it work in terms of me having some, but not other DLCs of FoG2? Will Empires only use core FoG2 army lists? Or will it be able to use units from DLCs, depending on what the player own? Or maybe it will use anything it needs, even if the player doesn't own a specific DLC?

I'm sorry if this was already explained, but I couldn't find that information. Thanks.

This is something we need to finalise the details on ourselves, but IF DLC content will be used in a particular converted battle than ownership of that DLC will be necessary to convert the battle.

[anguille]

I am very happy with what i see. I have been waiting for this since Sparta/Gates of Troy. It's almost the Legion 2 we have been waiting for. I guess we won't have the city-view of Legion, Chariots of War and Sparta? I really liked it and would hope you can add it at some point. If possible, i would like to have more options for the battles. In Legion/Sparta and Chariots of War, you could decide how the units would be deployed and give some basic orders at the beginning. Would it be possible to have more options? I do have Field of Glory 2 but i am not sure i really want to switch from one game to the other every time there is a battle. Thanks.

[Tamas]

I am very happy with what i see. I have been waiting for this since Sparta/Gates of Troy. It's almost the Legion 2 we have been waiting for. I guess we won't have the city-view of Legion, Chariots of War and Sparta? I really liked it and would hope you can add it at some point. If possible, i would like to have more options for the battles. In Legion/Sparta and Chariots of War, you could decide how the units would be deployed and give some basic orders at the beginning. Would it be possible to have more options? I do have Field of Glory 2 but i am not sure i really want to switch from one game to the other every time there is a battle. Thanks.

For now we are not planning such options. Your decisions come from who and when to engage and with what kind of army composition, after that it's your general's call.

[bebro]

I am very happy with what i see. I have been waiting for this since Sparta/Gates of Troy. It's almost the Legion 2 we have been waiting for. I guess we won't have the city-view of Legion, Chariots of War and Sparta? I really liked it and would hope you can add it at some point.

The city view/build part of Spartan was indeed something I totally miss. The gfx are probably considered outdated today, but IMO they had a lot of charm. But most importantly with limited resources and limited slots for buildings it added a lot of decision-making.

If I remember the build/research aspect of RTW II, that was rather something you just wanted to get over with.

I look fwd to see what FoG: Empires does in this regard.

[Paul59]

This is something we need to finalise the details on ourselves, but IF DLC content will be used in a particular converted battle than ownership of that DLC will be necessary to convert the battle.

Hi Tamas,

From my understanding of how the security encryption works, I am not sure that is the case. I think you can currently accept an MP challenge that contains DLC content, as long as the person posting the challenge owns the DLC. All the DLC units are added to a persons game when they load the latest patch. They need to own the DLC to play any Epic Battle scenarios or Campaigns (Historic and Custom). The encryption is in the scenarios, campaigns etc, not on the units themselves.

If they load an AGEOD file that contains DLC units, they will only be prevented from playing it if the file contained the encryption code, and I can't see how that would happen. That might be something that the team will want to consider.

cheers

Paul

[Tamas]

This is something we need to finalise the details on ourselves, but IF DLC content will be used in a particular converted battle than ownership of that DLC will be necessary to convert the battle.

Hi Tamas,

From my understanding of how the security encryption works, I am not sure that is the case. I think you can currently accept an MP challenge that contains DLC content, as long as the person posting the challenge owns the DLC. All the DLC units are added to a persons game when they load the latest patch. They need to own the DLC to play any Epic Battle scenarios or Campaigns (Historic and Custom). The encryption is in the scenarios, campaigns etc, not on the units themselves.

If they load an AGEOD file that contains DLC units, they will only be prevented from playing it if the file contained the encryption code, and I can't see how that would happen. That might be something that the team will want to consider.

cheers

Paul

Yeah, well as I said we are still working out what's the most covenient solution for this, but don't forget both games are in the Archon engine so we do not have to work with FOG2's default restrictions on this. Obviously, we want to avoid being too restrictive but that cuts both ways - we don't want to be too limiting for people without DLC, but also don't want to limit possible content for people with DLC.

At any rate, the goal is that whatever exact restriction will be in place, the player will be informed of it in Empires, so they won't have to convert just to find out they can't play.

[Paul59]

Yeah, well as I said we are still working out what's the most covenient solution for this, but don't forget both games are in the Archon engine so we do not have to work with FOG2's default restrictions on this. Obviously, we want to avoid being too restrictive but that cuts both ways - we don't want to be too limiting for people without DLC, but also don't want to limit possible content for people with DLC.

At any rate, the goal is that whatever exact restriction will be in place, the player will be informed of it in Empires, so they won't have to convert just to find out they can't play.

Yes, I am sure there are still a lot of tricky problems to consider, this is new territory for both parties. Hopefully it will all be thrashed out by the end of Beta testing.

[Froz]

Thanks for info. It would be nice if the game offered an option to replace the unavailable units with the closest equivalent instead of not allowing to play the battle at all. Of course on the other hand I understand that you want to encourage people to buy all the DLCs.

[EDIT]: another possibility, that is used in some other games, is to only allow player to play countries with army lists supported by whatever DLCs they have, but allow them to play against any armies regardless of owned DLCs.

[Tamas]

So a bit of a good news on the FOG2 DLC requirement topic: there isn't any.

There will be the possibility for some of the Legions Triumphant units to show up in your converted battles (maybe), but that doesn't matter: to convert battles from (and to) Empires, you will only need the base version of FOG2.